Introduction
This is a sequel to these prior posts:
South Africa’s history from the first white settlement in 1652 to the end of the Boer War in 1902.
From the founding of the Broederbond in the early twentieth century to the adoption of apartheid.
How I learned about the ultra secretive Broederbond.
Differences between the Afrikaans and the English.
Conspiracies I’ve known - Part IV
The good, the bad, and the ugly elements of world-wide governments during covid.
Now we’ll bring South Africa’s non-white population groups into this picture more fully.
South Africa’s non-white population groups
I’ll list them in chronological order of their arrival in South Africa:
San (Bushman) hunter gatherers
These people originally covered the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.
As hunter gatherers, they were nomadic.
Their only possessions were a few light tools, such as bows and arrows, that they could carry with them.
They lived in small family groups.
They had no system of private ownership (no land, no houses, no cattle).
They were very egalitarian with no hierarchical social structure.
They had an intimate connection with nature.
Over thousands of years, cattle herding tribes squeezed them southwards and westwards.
By the time I became aware of them, in the second half of the twentieth century, they had been reduced to living in Botswana and Namibia. They were remarkably adapted to the Kalahari Desert, just as the Aborigines in Australia had mastered desert survival.
Today, as I understand it, the “wild” San have been all but obliterated by mining company activities and other modern intrusions into their environment. This news breaks my heart.
Khoikhoi (Hottentots)
This was the first group of cattle herders to squeeze the San.
The Khoikhoi, who gravitated towards the southwestern part of Africa, themselves were squeezed by the Bantu tribes that constituted the next wave of cattle herders to migrate southwards from the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
Bantu
This population group, which comprised around 350 million people in the mid 2010s, covers most of sub-Saharan Africa.
All the Bantu languages share a common root in the same way that Indo-European languages do.
The name “Bantu” comes from a word that is common to all their languages. In their languages, bantu means people or humans or humanity.
In the Nguni branch of the Bantu languages, the word bantu is associated with the philosophy of ubuntu. It’s a belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.
The Bantu were cattle herding people who very gradually migrated southwards from Africa’s Great Lakes Region — around present-day Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya.
The Bantu people reached the Limpopo River, the northern boundary of today’s South Africa, around 1400 AD. That was about a hundred years before European explorers rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern end of the continent.
For now, we’ll leave the Bantu people where they were in 1400 AD, and we’ll meet another group.
Malay slaves
You’ll recall from Part I that the Dutch set up a resupply post for shipping at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. This necessitated the creation of orchards and gardens to grow fresh fruit and vegetables for the sailors.
When they took over the administration of the Cape Colony about 150 years later, the British continued to operate the Cape of Good Hope as a shipping supply post.
Both the Dutch and the British cast around for indigenous people to work on their farms. But they couldn’t find any.
Keep in mind that the Bantu tribes were still only in the northern part of today’s South Africa. They hadn’t yet made it as far south as the Cape Colony.
There were San hunters in the area, but they were wholly unsuited to farming. As a matter of fact, the Dutch regarded them as terrible pests. The San didn’t understand the concept of the private ownership of herd animals. When they saw cattle, they thought they were fair game for hunting, just like wild antelope were.
It pains me to tell you this, but the Dutch hunted the San people as if they were vermin. I’ve read chilling accounts of this from Dutch settlers’ journals.
In the absence of locally available laborers, both the Dutch and the British imported slaves from Southeast Asia, primarily Malaysia and Indonesia. The slave trade lasted for 176 years, from 1658 until the Cape Colony abolished slavery in 1834.
Coloureds
The arrival of Southeast Asian slaves contributed to the evolution of the Afrikaans language. The slave owners created a simplified version of Dutch to make it easier for the slaves to learn it.
Mulatto people, whom South Africans call Coloureds, resulted from intermarriage among Malays, whites, San and Khoikhoi people, and later the Bantu.
Today, most of South Africa’s Coloured (mixed race) people are Afrikaans-speaking. Following the religion that their Malay ancestors brought with them, many Coloureds are Muslim.
Since Malay slaves worked in Dutch and English people’s kitchens, they introduced spicey dishes, such as curries, which grew into favorite staples in South African cuisine.
Cape Town’s culture still enjoys colorful elements that reveal Southeast Asian influences.
What black means in South Africa
When a South African refers to someone as black, it means the person is a member of one of the Bantu tribes.
In South Africa it’s understood that a black person is 100% black.
This contrasts with the United States, where few black people are 100% black.
In South Africa, anyone who is of mixed race is referred to as Coloured.
Revisiting the Bantu tribes
Last time we met the Bantu tribes, around 1400 AD, they had reached the Limpopo River, which forms the northern border of today’s South Africa.
But the Bantu tribes didn’t stop there. They slowly continued to migrate southwards with their herds of cattle.
As the Bantu tribes were spreading southwards, the British were spreading eastwards from Cape Town. Simultaneously, Afrikaans pioneers (called Voortrekkers) were shaking the Cape Colony’s English-speaking dust off their feet and heading northwards into the interior with their ox-drawn, covered wagons.
The northbound and eastbound whites and the southbound blacks encountered each other and clashed at various points.
The first battle happened when one of the Bantu tribes, the Xhosa, encountered the British at the Kei River in the Eastern Cape Colony in 1779. It started a series of wars, known as the Xhosa Wars, that lasted 100 years, until 1879.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
As they explored further north, both the Afrikaans and the British had conflicts with other Bantu tribes.
The most formidable fighting force they encountered was the warlike Zulu tribe.
The most terrifying conflict that the Voortrekkers experienced was a battle on 16 December 1838. A force of between 10,000 and 15,000 Zulu warriors attacked an encampment of 464 Voortrekkers.
The Ncome River formed a barrier on one side of the Voortrekkers who circled their wagons into a laager to protect them on the remaining sides. It also helped the Voortrekkers that they had guns, whereas the Zulu warriors were armed with shields and spears.
The Voortrekkers prayed for deliverance. They made a vow that, if they survived, they would keep that date holy forever. The Voortrekkers prevailed. It is estimated that 3,000 Zulu warriors died in the battle. It was called the Battle of Blood River because the Ncome River’s water turned red from the warriors’ blood.
In fulfillment of the Voortrekkers’ vow, South Africa observed 16th December as a public holiday known as The Day of the Covenant.
Though South Africa now has a majority black government, the public holiday is still honored. However, its name has been changed to The Day of Reconciliation, which I rather like.
During the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, the British also had some epic battles against the Zulu army. As there is a good movie about one of those battles, I plan to say more about that in the post about South African movies (Conspiracies I’ve known - Part X).
Mopping up
By around 1885 or so, the British had subjugated all the black tribes in the territory that constitutes present-day South Africa. The only people whose resources the British didn’t control were the Boers (Afrikaans-speaking whites). It took the British another seventeen years to get that problem out of the way, by means of the Boer War, as I described in Conspiracies I’ve known – Part I.
Giving credit where it’s due
Paradoxically, there were three Southern African countries that Britain helped. They were:
Bechuanaland (now Botswana)
Basutoland (now Lesotho)
Swaziland (now eSwatini)
Each of these countries was a British protectorate from some time in the mid-to-late nineteenth century to the time that it got independence in the mid-to-late 1960s.
I don’t know how Bechuanaland and Basutoland came to be British protectorates. But I do know how it happened in my home country of Swaziland.
The South African Republic / Transvaal Colony that had been founded by Afrikaans pioneers kept on wanting to absorb Swaziland. But the Swazi people wanted no part of that. So, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the King of Swaziland appealed to Britain for assistance. Britain agreed to help.
Though being a British protectorate didn’t constitute unfettered freedom, it was a considerably better proposition for black people than being part of South Africa would have been.
Swaziland escaped the horrors of the apartheid system that was instituted in South Africa in 1948. Bechuanaland and Basutoland similarly evaded apartheid.
My father deflected a bullet for me
My own father was a white South African refugee of sorts. I don’t mean he was a refugee of a war or anything like that. But, in 1949, when the newly minted system of apartheid was being rolled out in South Africa, he quietly found a job in next door Swaziland and resigned from his job in South Africa.
When I was young, I thought my father was conservative. But, looking back on him now, I realize that, for someone of his era, he was more progressive than I was able to see.
In any case, I’m eternally grateful that I spent my childhood in Swaziland rather than South Africa. I don’t have the words to describe the difference that made.
Next …
Subsequent posts in this series may look like this:
Non-white population groups in South Africa:
East Indian / South Asian
Chinese
Bantu during the 20th and 21st centuries
Apartheid
Post-apartheid
Books about South Africa
Movies about South Africa